"Very. It sounded like an empty threat, but that little devil—she is a little devil, Jack. If I were in your place, I'd no more think of marrying her than of marrying a wild animal—well, she was going to make this an Austerlitz or a Waterloo—no drawn battles for Babs; she deliberately chose the night of the Bodmin Lodge ball and invited everybody she'd ever heard of. I got my card within twenty hours of the original row."
"Are you going?"
Loring laughed grimly and postponed answering the question.
"She's thorough!" he repeated. "I was still at breakfast, when she came in; I gather she's doing a house-to-house canvass. 'Jim darling, you're coming to my party, aren't you?' she said. 'I want it to be a success.' 'I am not,' I said. 'I heard about the row and I think you're behaving abominably.' 'It'll look bad, if my own—loving—cousin stops away from my coming-of-age ball,' she said, her eyes simply gleaming with devilry. 'Jim, if you all go against me, you'll spoil my party, and father'll think he's won. Then I shall go away and live by myself; and that would make a scandal, which you'd hate.' I told her that she was a little devil—in case she didn't know it before. Then she came behind my chair and put her arms round my neck; and I called her a number of other things. Mark you, I dislike her; I think she's intrinsically unsound, but I'm not in the least surprised that you fell in love with her; she knows her job so well. She said with a tear in her voice—and in her eyes; if you ever see her blinking quickly, it's just to make herself cry.... All right, but you may as well know these things before you marry her—she said, 'Jim darling, I love you, but you do make it hard for us to be friends.' I told her again that I wasn't coming to her ball. She sighed and began putting on her gloves. At the door she turned round and said, 'Jim, you know the little paragraph "Among those present ..."? Sometimes it's "Among those who accepted invitations...." I'm going to have a special paragraph—"Among those who refused invitations was the Marquess Loring."' Then she became a hundred per cent. devil; she was thoroughly enjoying herself. 'I won't let it stop at that! I'm going to have this thing properly advertised. In the morning you'll see wonderful descriptions and pictures of the ball—and that paragraph. And the evening papers will comment on it—all the disreputable ones; I'm the greatest friends with all the really disreputable papers. And next day you'll see pictures of yourself in the disreputable daily papers—"Lord Loring, Who is Reported to have said 'Damned if I do!' when his cousin Lady Barbara Neave invited him to her ball." I don't want to do it; it'll be a great deal of trouble; but this quarrel has been forced on me, and, if you drive me to it, I shall go through to the end.'" Loring sighed and fanned himself again. "You can't argue with a woman, when she's like that. I said I'd come. My mother and Amy came in, and she talked them over inside two minutes—left them with the idea that the Crawleighs habitually tied her to the bed-post and took a cat-o'-nine-tails to her (I wish they would); then she went off to continue the house-to-house canvass. It's heart-breaking!"
Jack listened with relief to the end of the tale. He had feared something worse, but he would almost rather hear of Barbara's misbehaving herself than not hear of her at all.
"There's no great harm done," he suggested.
"It's a toss-up. She can't blackmail everybody as she blackmailed me. God knows! you can do most things in the year of grace 1914, but an unmarried girl, with parents living, doesn't give balls on her own. Any number of people have rather raised their eyebrows in talking to me about it. If it's a success, there's about a six-to-four odds-on chance that people will think it rather a joke, Barbara's latest freak. But, if the thing's a failure, if any one starts a movement against it, then Barbara will declare war on society. Don't make any mistake; this isn't a fit of temper, it's a phase in her natural development. I've seen it coming for a long time; she wants to be in the position where a thing becomes right because she does it; she's always disregarded the law and now she wants to make the law. If the girl only had sisters! They might keep her in order.... You know, there's a certain magnificence about her; she's surrounded herself with every natural difficulty she could find—Bodmin Lodge; she's raiding the Pebbleridge preserve in broad day-light, she's asked Lady Pebbleridge to come on after her own party. Fancy dress—she's set herself to rival the Devonshire House ball.... Jack, is that the girl you want to marry? D'you imagine you'll ever be able to control her? If you'd seen her standing by the door—it was Joan of Arc giving the signal for battle."
"She can't blackmail me."
"What else is she doing now? She's blackmailing every one."
"Well, obviously I can't stop it until communications are re-established."